Dreams to Dust
by Anonamazing
Summary: "In the moment he loved and loathed her, this child of porcelain with her naivete and her shattered innocence... yet he had nothing but hatred for himself. In the moment, he had become a mere boy again, lost in the eyes of his Cat." A look at Littlefinger's relationships with the Starks, and the impact his obsession has on Sansa Stark's transformation into a player of the game.
1. Petyr and Catelyn: before the Duel

**Title: Dreams to Dust**

**Rating: Rated: T**

**Genre: Romance/Drama**

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**Chapter One: Petyr and Catelyn: Before the Duel**

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Catelyn struck the boy with the back of her hand, the fires of her frustration, anger and pity hitting Petyr Baelish strongly in the face.

He couldn't understand why; _should she not be pleased by what he-?_

"How could you?!" Catelyn spat at him, "how _dare_ you?! Why would you do this to me, Petyr, why?!"

"Cat-"

"You cannot take him to battle, you will get yourself killed!"

He shook his head, grabbed her by the shoulders. "I would rather die fighting for you than to live in a world where you have to waste your years with that oaf-!"

"That oaf is my betrothed, Petyr, the man I will _marry-!"_

"You can't marry him-!"

"-The man I _love!"_

There was silence then. The words cut into Petyr Baelish like a blade, plunged into his navel and dragged up to his throat so that he could no longer speak. Catelyn saw the devastation in his face, the way her words had shattered every fibre of his being, and flung her arms around his neck. She held him there in the silence for a very long time, and in a soft voice he mewed like a newborn cat calling for its mother.

"I... I love you, Cat."

Catelyn sighed. She knew that; of course she knew it, however much she wished that it had not been true. In the smallest of voices she replied,

"And I love you; you are my brother, my dearest friend, and to see any harm come to you would break my heart a thousand times over. For my sake if not your own, Petyr, please... don't do this. It would kill me to see you harmed."

He said those words again, the words that meant everything to him and made Catelyn want to scream, to cry, to kiss his forehead and hold him forever.

"...I love you."

"I know," she said, and her voice was cold. She felt the warmth of a tear on her bare arm, and did him the courtesy of pretending not to notice. Once Petyr had gathered his senses, he weakly pulled away from her, his eyes never meeting her face. She stroked his cheek with her glove and kissed his forehead again.

"Dear friend. My dear, sweet Petyr."

He laughed a little, a horrified breathless chortle that was filled with all of his heartbreak and pity.

"Your Petyr," he said in a broken voice, eyes still on the ground.

"...Always your Petyr."

**AN: Hi guys!** **This one is a little au-ish, my imagining of Cat's reaction to finding out about the duel between Littlefinger and Brandon Stark. ****Hope you liked the first chapter. Thus story was originally published on my other account, but I've made that one exclusively for my fics which have over 100 followers. Leave a review if you can, and I look forward to seeing you again! All the best!**


	2. Petyr and Sansa: A Single Kiss

**Chapter Two: Petyr and Sansa: A Single Kiss**

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**A Single Kiss**

_If they had executed you, what would they have done with me?_

The moment the words has flown from the girls lips, lord Baelish knew that she was a new person altogether. Harder, stronger, yet softer as the firm edge of childhood had melted off her bones, and her body had given way to the softness afforded only by womanhood. He thought of her mother, the way he had once watched her grow and had grown with her, and shuddered.

_Only a child._

And yet she was Catelyn exactly as he had dreamed, only with more vibrant hair and lighter eyes, crystal like the snows she had been raised in. Lesser folks might say that the red of her hair was the blood of the Direwolf, raging through her like a fire.

"I know what you want," she told him, her head buried over her stitching as she sat in the darkness of her chambers, feathers in her fingers and a thimble on her thumb. The silence curdled between them, and Petyr smirked.

"Do you."

It was not a question.

Sansa took note of the tone in his voice and turned to stare at him, those white-ice eyes cutting through him like a pick axe. The common folk were wrong about the wolfs blood in her; that face, those eyes, were Tully, through and through. They held the pride of old Hoster, who had cast him out like a leper for the shame he had brought upon Riverrun after his duel with Brandon Stark, the startled confusion of Edmure, the curious uncertainty of young Lysa and the ever-present fraternal pity of Catelyn. _Oh, my love._

Again the silence thickened, so much that Baelish became sure that it would never break. He turned for her door, prepared to leave her alone with her thoughts and her stitches, before a small sound caught his ear.

"Petyr."

The sound ran through him like a dagger up the spine. She had sounded so much like her mother in that moment, he could have sworn her ghost had drifted through the room.

It was the first time she had called him by his name, he realised; Gods be good she had never called him by his accursed nickname, and whilst he had taken fondly to being named a lord, his birth name moulded to her lips like molten candle wax, creamy and full. It was enough to make a lesser man weep... _but I am no lesser man,_ he reminded himself. Oh, his beginnings may have been modest, to put it lightly, but the man he was now was a thousand times the child he had been. He thought again of the duel, of the lessons it had taught him, and found his hands reach instinctively for his navel, fingering the fabric over the scar delicately.

He thought of Brandon, too, and of the sardonic joy he had felt upon hearing of his demise. He had written to Cat in desperation, convinced that now she could admit her love to him, that she was finally free of duty and honour... in hindsight, he doubted she had ever even read the note. His Cat, handed over to the second brother as though she were a Filly trading hands at a market. _Eddard Stark,_ he thought, and the name made him frown. Given to another man to love, to cherish, to carry his children and weep for him.

_Would you have wept for me, Cat? I wept for you._

He looked back to the Stark-Tully child, the gift the Gods had saw fit to grant another man. He imagined what it would have been like to hold a child of his own; he imagined himself in place of Stark, holding Cat's hand in the birthing room, kissing her hair and telling her it would all be alright. He imagined the child, and pictured Sansa, a tiny screaming fire-haired babe, held close to her mother's breast as she wept. He would have been a better father, Petyr told himself. He wondered, had the world been a truer place and she had been his, whether or not she would share any of his characteristics. Would she have inherited his stature, or his cunning, perhaps? Would she have taken after his hair, and had that copper sheen changed to locks as black as a ravens feathers? He would not have liked that, he decided.

Sansa folded her legs over the bed so that she was facing him, and tapped the seat beside her own in an unmistakable gesture; he approached, uncertain, suddenly feeling like a boy again, falling under another of his Cat's charms. He sat beside her in silence, watching, waiting.

The girl looked uncertain, weary; there was a gentleness to her which her mother had lacked. Baelish found it endearing, though his inner self cursed him for admitting any flaw of Catelyn's which did not reside within her daughter; but for every one quality which Sansa bettered her mother upon, Petyr could think of a thousand flaws within the child. She was not Cat... she was never going to be Cat. He stared at the girl once more, ice against ice, and that was when she said the words.

"...You can kiss me again, if you like."

He kept on staring at her, confused; to her credit, Sansa Stark did not look away.

Petyr did not understand. That day in the Godswood, when they had laughed together and pressed their hands around the mounds of the snow castle and he had pressed his lips against hers, she had pushed him away, horrified; it was in that moment, as her face had contorted into a grimace and turned from the rosy flush of winter days to the off-colour of curdled milk, that he had realised what he had done, and had remembered that she was not, in fact, his Cat. He had held her at arms length, and soon enough not at all. In that moment, he had loved and loathed her, that child of porcelain with her naïveté and her shattered innocence and her confusion, and he had nothing but hatred for himself. Lord Baelish, Littlefinger, Master of Coin and owner of Harrenhall, had no weaknesses; he would not falter, would not break, and would not bend unless he could somehow manipulate his servitude to his own advantage. The boy he had been, however- young Petyr, little Petyr from the smallest of the Finger isles had worn his every hope and desire on his sleeve; it had turned out that each and every one of those hopes and desires had manifested themselves in Catelyn Tully. In that moment, he had been a mere boy again, lost in the whirlwind that was Cat or whatever remained of her in her gentle, sweet daughter. He had lost control, and with the demise of his lady-wife, had almost payed the price... and would have, had it not been for Sansa.

For a second, he wondered if she truly understood the gravity of what she had done, the power which she had held in naming him innocent. Life and death. His life and death, and all for the sake of a single kiss in the snow.

And now she was there again, inviting, the spitting image of her mother and the half-remembered dream of little Petyr Baelish from the smallest of the Fingers. And she knew, he realised. She had seen the power which she could yield, and she had understood. _She knew._

Yet he found in that moment that he did not care. He rested his hands either side of her shoulders, leaned in close, and allowed his lips to press against her own.

Petyr sighed.


End file.
